Criminal Appeal No. 135 of 2010. Case: Budhadev Karmaskar Vs State of West Bengal. Supreme Court (India)
| Case Number | Criminal Appeal No. 135 of 2010 |
| Counsel | For Appearing Parties: P.P. Malhotra, ASG, Pradip Ghosh, Jayant Bhushan, T.S. Doabia, Ashok Bhan, Ratnakar Dash, I. Venkatanarayana, R. Sundaravaradan, Sr. Advs., A. Mariarputham, AG, Manish Singhvi, Shail Kr. Dwivedi, Manjit Singh, AAG, Pijush K. Roy, Reena George, Gautam Talukdar, Lajja Ram, Gaurav Sharma, D.S. Mahra, Sushma Suri, Sadhana ... |
| Judges | Markandey Katju and Gyan Sudha Misra, JJ. |
| Issue | Constitution of India - Article 21 |
| Citation | JT 2011 (8) SC 289, 2011 (8) SCALE 155, 2011 (4) UJ 2675 (SC) |
| Judgement Date | August 02, 2011 |
| Court | Supreme Court (India) |
Order:
Pinha tha daam-e-sakht qareeb aashiyaan ke
Udhne hi na paaye the ki giraftaar hum hue
Mirza Ghalib
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This exercise was initiated by us by our order dated 14th February 2011. By that order we dismissed the appeal of the Appellant, who was convicted for murdering a sex worker in a red light area in Kolkata by battering her head repeatedly against the wall and the floor of a room. Having dismissed the appeal we suo motu converted the case into a PIL by the same order in order to address the problems of sex workers in the country.
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In our order dated 14th February, 2011 we observed:
This is a case of brutal murder of a sex worker. Sex workers are also human beings and no one has a right to assault or murder them. A person becomes a prostitute not because she enjoys it but because of poverty. Society must have sympathy towards the sex workers and must not look down upon them. They are also entitled to a life of dignity in view of Article 21 of the Constitution.
In the novels and stories of the great Bengali writer Sharat Chandra Chattopadhyaya, many prostitutes have been shown to be women of very high character, e.g., Rajyalakshmi in 'Shrikant', Chandramukhi in 'Devdas', etc.
The plight of prostitutes has been depicted by the great Urdu poet Sahil Ludhianvi in his poem 'Chakle' which has been sung in the Hindi film Pyasa "Jineh Naaz Hai Hind Par wo kahan hain" (simplified version of the verse 'Sana Khwan-e-taqdees-e-Mashrik Kahan Hain').
We may also refer to the character Sonya Marmelodova in Dostoyevsky's famous novel 'Crime and Punishment'. Sonya is depicted as a girl who sacrifices her body to earn some bread for her impoverished family.
Reference may also be made to Amrapali, who was a contemporary of Lord Buddha
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We further observed:
Although we have dismissed this Appeal, we strongly feel that the Central and the State Governments through Social Welfare Boards should prepare schemes for rehabilitation all over the country for physically and sexually abused women commonly known as prostitutes as we are of the view that the prostitutes also have a right to live with dignity under Article 21 of the Constitution of India since they are also human beings and their problems also need to be addressed.
As already observed by us, a woman is compelled to indulge in prostitution not for pleasure but because of abject poverty. If such a woman is granted opportunity to avail some technical or vocational training, she would be able to earn her livelihood by such vocational training and skill instead of by selling her body.
Hence, we direct the Central and the State Governments to prepare schemes for giving technical/vocational training to sex...
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